The first duel was held in the main courtyard of Castelobruxo, which had been transformed for the occasion. Stone benches had risen from the ground in a wide crescent around a dueling platform that seemed to have grown straight up from the earth, pale marble veined with gold. Torches burned in colors that shifted depending on which side of the platform you sat on — warm amber for Castelobruxo, cool silver-blue for the guests.
The stands filled fast. Fila found herself wedged between June and Daniel on the Ilvermorny side, with the rest of her school packed in tight around them. Miles had somehow materialized a bag of something that smelled aggressively of cinnamon and was eating it with the calm composure of a man watching theatre.
"Where did you get those." Fila said flatly.
"Kitchen connection," Miles replied without looking at her. "Want some?"
Fila looked suspicious on the treats, "You managed to get connections already?" As she took three.
The crowd noise shifted suddenly, the way it does when something important steps into a room. Rin had walked onto the platform.
She didn't perform her entrance. She didn't need to. She simply walked out and stood there in the center of the marble, her hands loose at her sides, her expression somewhere between bored and politely present. Her robes were immaculate. Every line of her was still in a way that felt less like calm and more like a coiled thing resting.
Enzo came out on the other side to a roar from half the hall, raising one fist like he'd already won something.
Fila ate another piece of cinnamon whatever-it-was.
"He's already lost," June murmured beside her.
"Mhm," Fila agreed.
The headmistress Dourado soon took her position between them.
"Champions," Dourado said, her voice carrying across the entire courtyard without effort. "You will duel until one of you cannot continue, yields, or is rendered unable to compete. There is no yield shame. There is only the magic you carry and the choices you make with it tonight." She paused. "The Watchers will intervene only if there is risk of permanent injury. Beyond that, what happens on this platform is between you."
The torches shifted. The amber ones burned lower. The silver-blue ones climbed.
"Honor your schools. Honor your magic." Dourado stepped back and off the platform in one smooth motion. "Begin when ready."
No signal this time. No crack of red light into the sky.
Just silence, and then the two of them, standing forty feet apart on pale marble.
Enzo rolled his shoulders. He was performing still, even now — letting the crowd feel his confidence, feeding off the noise of his supporters like it was something he could store and use. His wand was already in his hand, loose and easy. He was smiling faintly, the smile of someone who had decided the outcome before it started.
Rin stood with her arms at her sides and her wand still holstered.
The crowd noticed that. A ripple went through the Castelobruxo section, half excitement and half unease.
"She hasn't drawn," Daniel said.
"I know," Fila said. But she was way to busy watching the girls magic, and to that she was impressed. Not a single bit of worry or fault. Which could only mean one thing. She had a lot of experience with something far worse.
Enzo noticed too. His smile sharpened. He took it as an insult, which was probably the correct interpretation, and launched forward with the kind of opening that was meant to end things quickly and humiliatingly. Three spells, rapid, overlapping, the third one riding the tail of the second so close they almost merged. It was technically immaculate. The kind of sequence you drilled for months to make look effortless.
Rin drew her wand on the third spell and redirected all three of them into the marble floor to her left with a single sweeping motion that looked almost lazy.
The marble cracked. A sound like a gunshot rang across the courtyard.
The crowd went completely silent.
Enzo stared at the cracked stone. Then back at Rin, who had lowered her wand back to her side and was watching him with that same politely present expression. Like she was waiting for him to try something more interesting.
"Oh she's mean," June breathed.
Fila said nothing. She was watching Rin's wand hand. The way she held it, low and close to her hip, the grip loose. Not defensive. Not aggressive. Just ready in the way that a very old and very patient thing is ready.
Enzo reset. The smile was gone now. Something colder had replaced it, and honestly Fila thought that was an improvement, the real fighter was more dangerous than the performer. He began to move, circling the platform edge, forcing Rin to turn with him, and as he moved he cast.
A pieces of the floor tore its way up and got laughed toward Rin.
She drew her wand upwards in an arch, and with it the marble was cut in half. The two parts landing just beside her on both sides. But even after that, Enzo still kept shooting spell after spell. Same and same again.
Rin dodged and deflected them all with ease.
Fila looked over at Bea, she sat a bit far away. But the trees around the school made it possible for her to see her facial expression. And to no surprise, she didn't look happy. The expression matched what you would look like when your favorite artist releases a seriously bad song after expecting something better.
"She's mapping him," Fila rasped, more to herself than anyone.
"What?" Daniel leaned in.
"She's letting him show her everything he has before she decides what to do about it."
Miles offered her the bag of cinnamon things. She took one without looking away from the platform.
Enzo felt it too — that he was being studied and not fought. It got under his skin the way it was designed to, and he pushed harder, faster, the spells coming with more heat and less precision. A streak of deep violet light scorched across the platform and caught the edge of Rin's sleeve, and for the first time something changed in her expression. Interest.
She looked down at her sleeve for a half second. Then back up at Enzo.
She started forward.
Not running. Not even fast, exactly. But purposeful in a way that was immediately alarming to everyone watching, because she walked toward him the way you walk toward something that you have already decided the ending of.
Enzo threw everything he had at her. Spell after spell, a wall of light and noise and raw force, and Rin moved through it like she had rehearsed this specific sequence in private. Not all of it missed — a cutting hex caught her across the forearm and drew a clean red line through the fabric and skin beneath, and a blasting curse clipped her shoulder hard enough to stagger her half a step, but she didn't stop. She corrected and kept coming and the crowd was on their feet making noise that Fila could feel in her sternum.
Then Rin raised her wand and the noise died instantly.
One single spell, powerful enough to make Fila stop chewing on the cinnamon thing she had in her mouth. The spell gave nothing away for anyone else, but for Fila who could see magic. It could only be described as an outburst of pure magic in its nastiest form.
The spell hit Enzo right in the chest. The air got sucked out of his lungs, blood shot up through his nose and eyes. And he flew backwards, only after flying backwards five meter he hit one of the walls.
His body hit the wall with a sickening crack and thud, that could be heard and felt through the audience.
He lay there for a moment, completely still.
The crowd did not make a sound.
Enzo moved. Slowly, with obvious effort, he pushed himself up onto one elbow. His lip was split. There was blood on his teeth when he smiled, and the smile was different now, genuine, ugly, stripped of everything performed.
"Okay," he said, loud enough to carry. "Okay."
He got up.
The Castelobruxo section erupted. Whatever else Enzo was, Fila had to admit that getting up after that was not nothing. He was bleeding from somewhere above his eyebrow now, a thin red line tracking down the side of his face, and his posture had changed, the looseness was gone, replaced by something low and braced and entirely focused on the woman standing ten meters away from him.
This was the real duel. Everything before had been introduction.
Enzo came back in fast and low, spell fire coming from angles that required him to move his whole body with each cast, making himself a harder target while he worked. He was good. Fila had known he was good and she was watching him be good and it still wasn't enough. Rin matched him step for step, cast for cast, and now she was giving back what she'd spent the first half of the duel collecting.
Enzo stopped and held his wand towards her. And with a warmth of the sun. a torrent of fire erupted from his wand. Moving with scary weight towards her.
And for the first time in the whole duel, she looked scared and had to move away. The fire had been too close to counter cast.
"Okay I take back what I said," June said. "He's not nothing."
"Never said he was nothing," Fila replied. "Just said he'd lose."
The duel tightened. The platform was a mess by now, marble cracked and scorched in a dozen places, the gold veining in the stone glowing faintly where spellfire had passed over it. Both of them were bleeding. Rin's forearm had soaked through the fabric above her wrist and a dark stain had spread across her shoulder where the blasting curse had connected. Enzo looked like he'd lost an argument with a wall, which was essentially accurate.
But he was still standing and still casting and Fila noticed something she hadn't expected.
He was getting faster.
But not from general skill, he just knew his adrenaline was running out. And he was thinking fast to make use of it for as long as possible.
During this time, Enzo had casted a spell into the ground just below Rin. Which had sent shrapnel right into her face.
Not in his spell work. In the way he was reading her. He'd spent the first half of the duel being mapped and he'd used that time to map her back, and now he was applying it. The adjustments were small but they were there, and twice in the space of thirty seconds he managed to slip something past her guard that made her move instead of deflect.
A bone-shaking concussive blast caught Rin directly and she went down on one knee.
The Castelobruxo side of the arena lost their minds.
Fila leaned forward slightly.
Rin was on one knee, her head down, one hand braced against the cracked marble. The blood from her forearm was dripping onto the stone in a slow, steady rhythm. She was breathing hard. The first time all night she'd been breathing hard.
Enzo walked toward her. Slowly, deliberately, the mirror of what she had done to him twenty minutes ago. He raised his wand, and for a moment the courtyard was completely still, the only sound the distant hiss of the color-shifting torches.
"Yield," he said. Flat. No performance left in it.
Rin lifted her head.
She was smiling.
It was a small smile, contained, the kind that lives mostly in the eyes. But it was there, and it was the most expression she had shown the entire evening, and something about it made the hair on Fila's arms stand up.
She said something in Japanese. Quiet enough that only Enzo could hear it.
Whatever it was, it made him hesitate for just a fraction of a second.
That was all she needed.
She was back on her feet before the hesitation finished and what came next happened so fast that the spectators who later tried to describe it gave three different accounts of the sequence. Fila saw it clearly because she was watching through the blindfold
She used apparition, and appeared right next to him. Her wand aimed at his ribs from the right. And with a small light of purple, he was thrown even harder than before. his body bounced on the ground before coming to a halt right into the wall again.
This time he didn't move.
The Watchers moved toward the edge of the platform but didn't step on it. Not yet. The rules were clear, and Enzo was still technically conscious, one hand pressed flat against the scorched marble, his chest heaving. Blood from the shrapnel cuts across his face had smeared down his jaw.
The crowd was split clean down the middle. The Castelobruxo section that had supported him was dead silent. The ones who'd been quietly cheering for Rin were on their feet.
Rin stood over him. Not close, she'd stepped back to a respectful distance after the hit. Her wand was lowered. She was bleeding freely from the shrapnel cuts across her cheek and brow, thin red lines tracking down the side of her face that she hadn't bothered to wipe away. Her shoulder was still dark with the stain from before. She looked like she'd been in a war and was mildly inconvenienced by it.
She waited.
Enzo tried to get up. He made it to both knees, then one foot, and then the leg buckled and he went back down to one knee. His wand hand was shaking. Not from fear. From the kind of full-body exhaustion that comes when you've spent every single thing you had and the bill has come due all at once.
He stayed there on one knee for a long moment, his head down, breathing.
Then he drove his wand point-first into the cracked marble in front of him and left it there.
The courtyard understood what that meant before Dourado even opened her mouth.
She called it anyway. Clean and clear and final.
The noise that followed was enormous. The silver-blue side of the arena came apart completely. Aaron was on his feet screaming something that got lost in the general wall of sound. Sera stood with her arms folded and an expression that on anyone else would have been a smile but on Sera was just a very slight relaxation of her usual severity. Even some of the Castelobruxo students were on their feet, the ones who'd wanted Enzo to lose, and they were loud about it.
Fila sat in her seat.
She watched Enzo reach forward and pick his wand back up from the marble. Slowly, with the care of someone moving through pain. He got to his feet on the second attempt and stood there, one hand pressed to his ribs, blood drying on his face. He didn't look at the crowd. He looked at Rin.
She was already looking at him.
Something passed between them. Fila couldn't name it exactly. The specific language of two people who have just tried very hard to take each other apart and come out the other side knowing exactly what the other one is made of. There was no warmth in it. But there was something like acknowledgment. The kind that means more than warmth.
Enzo nodded once, short and tight.
Rin returned it.
Then the medics were on the platform and the moment was over.
The Watchers moved Enzo off toward the medical corridor with professional efficiency. He went without arguing, which told Fila more about the state of him than anything else had. The real Enzo, she suspected, would have had something to say. This one just walked.
"Well," Miles said.
Fila looked at him. He had finished the entire bag of cinnamon things. Every last one. He held it upside down over his open hand to demonstrate this and a single crumb fell out.
"You ate all of them," Fila said.
"You were distracted," Miles replied. "It would have been wasteful."
"I had taken three."
"And then you put them back in the bag when the duel started, and then you forgot about them, and then I ate them." He folded the empty bag with neat precision. "This is a natural consequence of being observant."
June leaned forward from Fila's other side. "What did she say to him? Before the end."
"I don't know," Fila said. A lie.
After a short moment, the headmistress walked up on the battered grounds. Her hand in front of her. "The winner of the first duel, Rin!"
The stands erupted with cheers and applauds, Rin gave a slight bow in return as she stood beside the headmistress.
"They both fought well, but only one can win in the end. And with that, the next duel's participants will be drawn." She snapped her finger and the board that had been in the great hall before popped out over the duel ring.
The first two names had been drawn, one in red and one in white.
With another pop the bowl with the names appeared. The bowl slowly sank down to Rins height. She didn't need to be told what to do, so with shaky hands she pulled the first name and held it towards the headmistress.
She read it and nodded. "From Ilvermorny, Marcus."
The Ilvermorny students first looked at him, and than cheered and gave him taps on his shoulder. But he didn't look like he wanted them. after what he just saw happened in the duel mere moments ago. But he put on a smile and stood.
"And for who he will face of against." She paused and took her hand into the bowl again.
The audience held their breaths, even Fila felt slightly nervous. Not that she would be picked. But she had always wondered what would happened if the same school got picked twice. But she really wanted to know who would kick Marcus's ass.
She finally pulled a name from the bowl. "Yumi from Mahoutokoro"
Applauds rang out. And a short girl from the Japanese team stood up. One of the two who Fila didn't know the name of before.
"The duel will be held on Friday. Have a good night everyone." She said and walked of the ring, heading towards the medical bay no doubt.
The crowd filtered out slowly, the way crowds do after something worth talking about. In clusters and pockets, replaying what they'd seen, filling in the parts their eyes had been too slow to catch with whatever their imagination offered instead.
Fila moved with the flow of it, her hands tucked behind her head, letting the current of people carry her back toward the school entrance. June was beside her dissecting the duel in technical detail with Daniel, who was listening with the focused expression of someone taking mental notes. Miles walked on Fila's other side eating something else now, origin unknown, a small dark thing that smelled faintly of anise.
"Where did that come from," Fila said.
Miles just held his hand towards her, "I had it in my pockets." He said as if it was the most normal thing ever.
Fila just waved her hand in a no thank you way.
The duel had put many things in place for her. First, how it worked. Not I terms of beating the other until you somehow win. But in terms of what is overkill and not, and in short but simple answer to that. Go absolutely crazy until the opponent doesn't move by him or her being dead or unconscious. don't stop until that has been achieved.
Fila had been somewhat scared the duels would be kind of boring.
In her stride while thinking it all through she felt a tug on her shirt.
She turned to the source, and behind her stood the most adorable little deer, with eyes as big and round as small diamonds. "Bea, whats…" she saw the glossy way her eyes reflected and felt her heart almost stop.
"Hey." Fila said it soft, the rasp in her voice dropping to almost nothing. She stepped out of the flow of the crowd without thinking about it, letting the people behind her split and move around them like water around a rock. "Hey, what happened."
Bea shook her head, a small tight motion. "Nothing happened. I'm fine."
"Bea."
"I said I'm fine." But her voice had that particular thinness to it that voices get when they're being held together by effort rather than actual stability, and her eyes were still doing the glossy thing, and Fila had not known her very long but she had been paying attention for all of it.
She looked around. June and Daniel had continued forward without noticing, still deep in their technical breakdown of the duel. Miles had stopped a few steps ahead and was looking back at them with an expression of quiet, unobtrusive awareness. He caught Fila's eye and tilted his head very slightly toward the school entrance in a way that meant he'd handle the others and give them space, then turned and kept walking.
Fila looked back at Bea.
"Come here," she said, and steered them both off the main path and into the shadow of one of the wide stone pillars that lined the courtyard perimeter. It was quieter here, the noise of the departing crowd muffled and distant, the torchlight softer. The school loomed above them, warm and lit, the jungle breathing its low humid breath just beyond the walls.
Bea leaned back against the pillar and looked up at the sky. She blinked twice, slowly, in the deliberate way of someone who has decided they are absolutely not going to cry in a courtyard in front of a person they have known for approximately two days.
Fila waited. She was good at waiting.
"It's stupid," Bea said finally.
"Okay." Fila said a little shocked.
"It's genuinely stupid and I know it's stupid."
"Also okay."
Bea exhaled.
"I'm so fucking scared Fila." She let out a big breath of air, "After I saw what happened… and… and." She was about to burst into a full breakdown. So Fila did the only logical thing.
She pulled her hard into a hug. "Shh, its okay." Fila said softly into her ear.
But it didn't stop the floods, and soon she heard and felt the tears and cries of Bea. Right into her chest as she held her close. Fila didn't let go. Even if it took hours or days.
And it took some time for the girl to regain her somewhat composure before she could even say anything. And by this time, they both sat, Bea sat while leaning on Fila.
"I was so scared to be drawn for the next fight." She finally admitted.
Fila looked down on the girl who usually was taller than her, but in this state she leaned on her shoulder. "Its okay to be scared Bea, I don't think anyone knew it was going to look like that."
Bea finally looked up to Fila, her eyes were puffy and red by now. And snot and tears could be seen on the normal places. "Than why aren't you? or anyone else?!" she let out.
Before Fila answered she took her sleeve of the shirt and rubbed of the dried tears from under her eyes. "I am scared Bea." She rubbed some snot of from under her nose, she didn't care about it coming on her shirt. "And everyone else is too. They just hold it in. even the Japanese guys got scared but they are very good at hiding it."
The cool night air settled around them, a sharp contrast to the heat of the duel that had just scorched the courtyard. Fila kept her arm around Beatriz, holding her with a steady.
"You think Rin wasn't scared?" Fila rasped, her thumb tracing small, absent circles on Bea's shoulder. "She was walking into a circle with a boy who can throw fire like a god. She just decided that whatever she was afraid of was less important than what she had to do."
Beatriz sniffled, leaning more heavily into Fila, "It looked like a war, Fila. It didn't look like a school tournament. It looked like they were trying to break each other's souls."
"Maybe they were," Fila said honestly. She didn't believe in lying to people to make them feel better; she'd had enough of that in her own life. "But that dosent mean that they weren't scared," Fila said and put some stray hair from Bea behind her ear.
Fila tilted her head back against the stone pillar, looking up at the vast, star-choked Brazilian sky.
"If it makes you feel better, you would wipe the floor of anyone in the Ilvermorny team." She said and leaned her head onto Beas.
She gave a short scoff.